Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

ISIS Administered by 12-Member Committee Instead of Baghdadi

Beirut- ISIS has limited the role of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and sent a 12-member leadership council to the Syrian territories under the name of “negotiating committee” to practically lead the terrorist organization, informed Syrian sources said on Sunday.

“Lately, Baghdadi has only been ISIS’ image, while the actual leadership of the organization in Syria and Iraq is in the hands of a 12-member council that plans and orders everything related to the group,” the founder of the Euphrates Post, Ahmad al-Ramadan, told Asharq Al-Awsat on Sunday.

Ramadan denied reports that Baghdadi had been killed in an air strike in Syria, asserting that the leader of ISIS “initially lives in Iraq.”

The founder of the Euphrates Post also said that the 12-member council has lately moved to Syria but issues decisions implementable in Syria and Iraq.

The latest development comes at a time when ISIS faces in its stronghold in Raqqa an attack from three fronts, led by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which already infiltrated from the east and west of the city and has lately opened a new front against the organization by attacking its linked Division 17 base in the north.

Meanwhile, a video released on the Internet showed on Sunday Syrian regime helicopters dropping barrel bombs on the city of Daraa and a Palestinian refugee camp in the southwest of the city.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that more than 170 missiles and barrel bombs had targeted Daraa on Sunday.

Currently, ISIS faces four battles in Syria, where the SDF and coalition forces attack the terrorist organization’s stronghold in Raqqa, while the Syrian regime and its allied militias face the group at three other fronts, in the countryside of Palmyra, the countryside of Damascus and in the eastern desert in the countryside of eastern Hama.